A single mother of three who saved a stranger when a tree fell on his SUV four months ago has been rewarded in a huge way for her good deed. Thanks to a GoFundMe started by Bryan Pederson, the man she rescued, Veronica Marin, 26, of Tomball, Texas, received a new mobile house on Friday, Sept. 27, which replaced her previous home that needed serious repairs.
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00:00I was driving through what seemed to be another Houston storm.
00:03It turned out it was a little worse than that.
00:05And as I was on the phone with my wife, a tree came crashing through the roof.
00:09I thought that was the end until I saw these two at the window of the passenger side of my vehicle.
00:16They were able to pry the door open.
00:18She was very adamant. She said, you're getting out of here.
00:20She pulled me out and she disappeared.
00:22She never even waited for a thank you or anything.
00:24She just did it out of the goodness of her heart.
00:26Just the picture of the car alone was pretty dramatic.
00:29And my wife posted it and said, we're looking for the woman that saved my husband.
00:33If you know who this might be, please help us find her.
00:36Four days went by and it actually came to a point where I was like, was she even there?
00:40Was this something that I drew up in my mind?
00:42And was it just Travis there?
00:44I know because I don't like cameras.
00:46So what happened was I think somebody at her work said that she had showed a picture of the car to somebody at work.
00:52And he said, someone's looking for you.
00:54You should go on Facebook and he sent her the link.
00:56And so she reached out to my wife on Facebook Messenger and just said, I think I'm the woman you're looking for.
01:01My wife said, you saved my husband's life.
01:03What can we do for you?
01:04And she invited us to her home and we saw that, you know, there's some repairs that we can do.
01:08And the more people that I told this story to, the more people were like, we got to help this woman.
01:13We got to do something.
01:14When we first got into the house, I actually had a friend, his name's Chris, that came by and he's a home inspector.
01:19And so he looked at the problem areas.
01:22We knew she had a leak.
01:23She showed us where she collects rainwater in a bucket in a laundry room.
01:26And of course you could see there was moisture damage.
01:29Her floors were terrible.
01:31That was the first place we needed to start.
01:32But they also had said that we likely would have mold issues.
01:35And once we started hearing that, I was like, oh, I really don't want to go down that road.
01:39I was skeptical initially when some friends had said, let's start a GoFundMe for her.
01:43I've seen GoFundMe get started for very trivial reasons.
01:47It just blew up.
01:48Thanks to you guys, the people, I mean, I was, I couldn't believe it.
01:51I started just getting texts and everyone said, People Magazine brought this story to life.
01:54And I'm like, I looked at the GoFundMe and I don't even think she realized because she went to work.
01:59And this just tells you how humble she is.
02:01I think it was sitting at 50,000 at the time.
02:04She took a picture and she said, Brian, it's too much.
02:07Make them stop.
02:08We started looking at, let's just get you in a new home.
02:10We were looking at a used home.
02:11She had put a deposit down on a used home even.
02:13And then of course, once the team at Boston came through, they're like, well, how about a brand new one?
02:19To make that possible.
02:20And they did.
02:21It's amazing.
02:22People came together for something to help her out.
02:25She deserved it.
02:26And their family gets a fresh start, you know, on something that she, she didn't turn around.
02:31You know, like some of my coworkers and stuff, you never know.
02:35I would hope Veronica would be there if I'm ever trapped like that.
02:39I guess for me, it was seeing the power of community.
02:42It's life changing for me.
02:44I've got this new faith in humanity and it's just amazing to witness.